93 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret Peterson HaddixFound
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 28-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary
Hodge holds something that does not quite look like a gun, but Jonah is sure he heard a gunshot. JB reprimands Hodge, saying he was not “supposed to bring that into the twenty-first century” (259). “That” is an Elucidator, a device from the future that holds information and allows someone to manipulate time travel and aging.
Hodge, Gary, and JB are from an unspecified time in the future. Hodge and Gary work for a company called Interchronological Rescue. The company’s initial mission was to retrieve babies from the past whose disappearances would not interfere with time and give them new homes in the future. As rich people in the future got greedy, the company’s goals shifted to providing parents with famous kids from the past, even if doing so disrupted time.
Jonah and the other kids were kidnapped from their former lives and de-aged so they could be given to wealthy families. JB stopped the time machine before it reached its destination. Jonah and the others were never supposed to go to the 21st century. Angela then steps from the shadows in the cave and tasers Hodge and Gary. Hodge drops the Elucidator. Jonah picks it up and refuses to hand it over to JB.
Chapter 29 Summary
Jonah throws the Elucidator to Katherine and then runs to tackle Angela, who he believes is on JB’s side. Instead, Angela gives the Taser to Jonah and tells him to “pretend that you captured me” (269). Jonah ties up Hodge, Gary, JB, and Angela. Gary gives Jonah the code to open the cave door. The door opens slowly like “an ancient boulder covered with a thousand years of moss” (274). Instead of the forest, there is just nothingness outside.
Chapter 30 Summary
Jonah demands an explanation from the adults. JB explains they are in a time hollow, a place that exists “outside of time” (276). Hodge and Gary show a promotional commercial from Interchronological Rescue, and JB defines some time-traveling terminology. There’s the Paradox, “the possibility that time travelers might cause some event in the past that would lead to their own nonexistence” (280), and the ripple, “any significant change caused by time travelers, which then alters the present and the future” (280). Jonah demands the adults tell the kids who they are. Katherine pulls up a seating chart from the plane, which shows famous people who were lost, such as Anastasia Romanov and Charles Lindbergh III. JB calls the kids the “missing children of history” (285).
Chapters 28-30 Analysis
By throwing the Elucidator to Katherine, Jonah resolves the relationship growth between the two characters. In the moment where Jonah must act without thinking, he trusts Katherine implicitly, proving he no longer thinks of her as his annoying younger sister. Throughout the book, Katherine consistently proves that she can think under pressure and takes actions that deliver results. Jonah understands now that Katherine is both a force in her own right and in his family.
Interchronological Rescue is revealed as the catalyst of the story’s main conflict. The shifting motives of the company resulted in Jonah, Chip, and the other children landing in the 21st century. JB works to fix the holes in time brought on by Interchronological Rescue, while Hodge and Gary wish to continue delivering Jonah and the others further into the future. Every moment the kids stay outside their rightful times, the paradox and ripple are in danger of being set off. JB’s opposition to Hodge and Gary represents two possible fates of time. Either time will be fixed, or it will be broken beyond repair.
Back in Chapter 7, Jonah feels he is in a separate dimension from the typical problems of middle-school life. His earlier feelings foreshadow the book’s climax taking place in the time hollow—essentially, an alternate dimension. The words of Jonah’s history teacher also come to pass in a literal way. Jonah and the other kids are important figures from the past who might be studied in a 21st century history class.
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